Thursday, July 24, 2008

In my last post I related an anecdote about a time when I was in competition with two friends for the affections of a young lady, mentioning that one of the friends told her that the other two of us were a gay couple.We’ll call the friend who purportedly made this slanderous claim John, as that was his name.John completely denied making this claim about myself and our friend “Jeff.”(“Jeff’s” actual name? Jeff.)Now, I heard about all of this from “Jeff,” so it’s entirely possible that John was telling the truth when he claimed innocence, and that “Jeff” made the whole thing up in an effort to set John and I against each other, clearing the way for himself.Honestly, this seems like the more likely explanation, as it really seems like something that would have been utterly out of character for John.(Possibly one of our other friends made it up and told “Jeff” that John had said this. Who knows? More to the point, 9 years later and a thousand miles away, who cares?)Still, whatever the truth of the matter, it’s largely irrelevant, as I told John that I believed his denial – which I pretty much did – and shrugged the whole thing off.After all, I’d entered the competition rather half-heartedly anyway, as I was reasonably certain that “Jeff,” as he had so often in the past, would be the one to come out ahead anyway.In the early stages of the competition, there came a night on which I made a rather embarrassing Freudian slip when talking to the object of our affections, whom we’ll call Jenni. We’ll call her that because that’s what her parents called her.(Note: It made me feel odd to be pursuing someone who had the same name as my youngest niece. Not odd enough to not pursue her anyway, but odd nonetheless.)In any case, one night I was sitting in the bar, which was unusually “Jeff” and John-free, and Jenni came in and sat down next to me. I bought her a drink and we began to talk about any number of things, at one point settling on the topic of how she was dressed. Jenni was a waitress at a nearby restaurant, and usually came into the bar after getting off of work, dressed in her work clothes, which consisted of a white blouse and black pants. I think I said something about having never seen her wearing anything else, and she said that she would be sure to come in sometime on a non-work night so that I could see her in her regular clothes.Eventually she decided to head home and as I bid her farewell, I said, “Hopefully next time I’ll get to see you in regular clothes.”At least, that’s how the sentence formed in my brain.What I actually said was, “Hopefully I’ll get to see you out of your clothes.”This, of course, led to an awkward pause, after which I said, “I meant, see you out of your work clothes.” Dammit! “I mean – ”She responded, “Oh, trust me; I know what you meant.”I’m not sure if that’s what killed my chances with her – she did deliver her parting line rather good-naturedly – but at the very least it was probably the nail in the coffin.(And, again, she was a total cokehead, so it’s probably just as well that “Jeff” was the “winner” of the competition.)Anyway, I just wanted to further elaborate on the anecdote I mentioned in the last post, and to post something at least a little less crude and offensive.Not much that’s noteworthy or interesting going on in my life. Today was pretty standard; work, meetings, conference calls, work, home, sleepiness, etc.That pretty much brings you up to speed.